The battle against ovarian cancer

I read the extract from Susan Gubar's book (Ovarian cancer: a call to arms, 2 September) with great interest. Earlier this year my wife finally lost her battle against ovarian cancer after a three-and-a-half-year struggle. I do feel that it deserves the description "the silent killer".

My wife had symptoms for more than five months, during which time even hospital specialists were looking at other causes such as gastrointestinal problems. When finally diagnosed, it had spread and was classified as an advanced stage-three cancer. After surgery (debulking as the notes put it) and chemotherapy, most of the disease had gone, but as soon as treatment stopped it reappeared.

This was to be the pattern over the next three years, during which time she was offered numerous trial treatments. All of them were in their own way successful, although some caused so much suffering that seemed at times to make one wonder if it was worth it, but each time at the end of the treatment the disease would come back.

As a layman and someone who watched his partner suffer so much but never give up hope, I can only feel that until some sort of national screening programme to enable early diagnosis is available, ovarian cancer is likely to remain "the neglected cousin". For if highly trained doctors can mistake the symptoms then any woman with them is likely not to realise the implications.

I do not want the death of my wife, along with those of the remaining 4,400 women who die each year from the disease, to be in vain. There must be something that can be done.Terry Brown Leatherhead, Surrey

• Because so many of my friends have died of ovarian cancer I volunteered for the UK Collaborative Trial of Cancer Screening research project to determine the most effective method of detecting asymptomatic disease. Subjects were randomly divided into three groups. Over a period of some years one group had regular blood tests, one group had no tests and the third had intrauterine sonography.

The project ended last year and early results indicated that blood tests were more effective in detecting early, symptomless, ovarian cancer. I understand that the final results of the research will be published in December this year. Margaret GoochPortsmouth

• I would like to take respectful exception to Professor Gubar's understanding that there is "no patron saint of ovarian cancer". In 1989, American comedian Gilda Radner succumbed to the disease at the age of 42. In her book, It's Always Something (published just months after her death), she talked about having ovarian cancer as being a member of a club she does not wish to belong to.

After her passing, her husband, the actor Gene Wilder, worked with others to promote awareness of ovarian cancer and to establish a community of Gilda's Clubs to help people coping with cancer. It is an important and lasting legacy which I hope Dr Gubar and others who must face this terrible disease may take some comfort in.Rebecca WilkinsonLiverpool

• While it may be true that, as Susan Gubar says, "there is no patron saint of ovarian cancer", there is an old and much loved icon in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in the Italian city of Ravenna, known as the "Sancta Maria a tumoribus". As a striking image depicting disease and suffering, it is believed to help people with cancer of any kind. However, by tradition it specifically attracts prayers and supplications with lighted candles on behalf of those with female tumours, especially those of the ovaries. Giles OakleyLondon

•It was not just James Watson and Francis Crick who were awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1962. Maurice Wilkins was the third recipient and, as in Susan Gubar's excellent article, is often overlooked. Working at King's College London, he and Rosie Franklin provided vital x-ray diffraction data to the Cambridge pair which resulted in publication of the structure in 1953.Dr Peter B BakerLondon